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Mike's 1986 Mustang convertible build thread

Day 1, in the previous owner's garage. He brought it home a year prior, and an '87 5.0L HO (to eventually replace the 3.8L V6) on a stand beside it. He put a new battery in it and did nothing else, it was on the back burner. He thought it would need all new brakes... it had all new brakes on it. He ran into personal issues, and it had to go. It looked decent to me, so I crawled around underneath. There were fairly small soft spot areas in the four corners of the floor, a missing driver's door molding, and the bottom strip of material of the back window curtain had separated and shrunk drooping down. The rims looked okay and the tires decent. It fired right up, and I confirmed my being sure it was CFI, not a carburetor like he thought. The top and windows worked. We struck a deal and the 5.0L and a tarp were included.

If you're thinking that passenger seat below looks cockeyed, you're right. Luckily the floor is good and solid under the rear outer seat bolt, because I had to pound back down where some jackASS had obviously jacked the car up at that point... oye, I have a longer list of things I ran into with this thing that I may share later, lol...

Pretty dirty interior, and there is a dash crack through the far side speaker opening hole...

I thought I'd start a build thread that, for now, might be educational for someone, because there really isn't anything exciting going on yet. I'm just getting it on the road shortly, and it's been a fairly long road so far. I hope you enjoy following along.

I hope not, lol! It has had a re-paint, but it's the same color behind the door panels and everywhere else, so it's the original red.

Thanks, it's decent. The photos don't show it, but there's a number of (just visible when you get looking closely) hail or golf ball dings on top body surfaces, and it did get a pretty good punch in the nose on the driver's side at some point, with some not-so-best-practices body shop repairs. Maybe, maybe not, with this 5.0L. It would be nice to hang onto since it's an '87 with the standard size good shape bores and forged pistons (well, 7 of them... I'm thinking there must be some used standard pistons around, like at machine shops that do over-boring and sell new pistons, unless they get tossed... or I wondered if wrecking yards might sell a rod and piston if they keep older stuff... anyways), but it is listed for sale locally, for some much-needed-right-now bucks, with an honest description of it's condition and pictures, but there's only been one low ball offer. The plan, ultimately, is to get a V8 of some form in there, and without EFI.

Upon checking things out, the driver's side rear window dropped into the abyss, so I investigated, and the metal/rubber that encapsulates the glass had rusted enough to dislodge from the metal block that rides up and down the guide rod. Took it all out and all apart and fixed with new steel, the good black urethane windshield sealing adhesive, new hardware, and some jb weld for a busted out portion of the guide rod base. Cleaned and lubed guide rod and also everything for the other window, and reinstalled to as close as I could figure where the adjustments were before. Neither back side window is adjusted right yet, and I still have to figure out a way of doing that when they are installed, because I don't see any access to the adjustments when they're in there... Any ideas for that?

I'd say whoever installed the last replacement top was DRUNK, lol, as can be seen by the dimensions below. This is no doubt the reason the bottom strip separated from the glass. For now, I unattached and reattached the too-tight end to the bottom bar, hunted around some and found a piece of material that's not super noticeable but is light grey, doubled it and covered that whole bottom area, with urethane everywhere securing it, and put the curtain back in the car. Seems fine, and is good enough for now until a new top can be had.

Also had to fix the surprisingly thin fragile plastic water drain boxes in the trunk, with jb weld and black urethane, and cut a few inches of spout from two old funnels I had kicking around, to repair the box outlets that attach to the rubber hoses that go down behind each rear wheel well and out the bottom of the rear quarter panels.

This is the third car this (favorite of mine) Grant GT steering wheel has been on. First on my '86 T-Bird, then my '83 Cougar.
Door panels were off for glass rub felt fixing, cleaning/lubing window guides and guide rods, and oiling all lock and handle linkages, as well as some door bottom repair and oiling the heck out of their insides. The console was out for fixing both busted off uprights of the tray that's under the emergency brake handle, and for a good cleaning. The seats were still wearing their brown neglect at this stage...

It was dirty, but I'm glad there's no rips and such in the upholstery.

The tires that were on the car when I got it, on American Racing five spokes, upon closer inspection, all had bad cracking between their tread blocks. That was a first for me, seeing that condition in tires. Anyway, it needed tires. I scored damn near new P235/60R-15 Cooper Cobras on a great set of 10-holes to boot, for a better price than ONE new tire of any size would have cost.

Sometimes the car wouldn't start in Park. After checking wiring and connectors and ignition switch, and I'd already replaced a toasted and sticking starter solenoid, and pricing around for new neutral safety switches, which everybody wanted $100+ for, I dove into unknown waters, and removed it and carefully drilled through the two rivets holding it together, and opened it up. One roller was sitting outside of it's channel in there. I don't know if it was like that on the car, or from when I opened it up, because they are spring-loaded.

I cleaned out what was left of the "grease" Ford put in there 30 years ago, which was mostly a dried sticky crust, not lubricating anything. "Lubed for life" they tell us. BS, I say, lol (I guess that's a matter of interpretation of the word "life". My interpretation is to infinity, or at least for as long as the component is still in use). Cleaned up all the copper and brass, greased 'er up, stretched those little springs a wee bit for good solid contact, found a couple small screws to reassemble it. It seemed to rotate smoothly now and click through it's positions, so I put it back on the car and adjusted it. That's done with the transmission in Neutral, with a #43 (0.089", or a 5/64" at 0.0781" will suffice) drill bit inserted to about 1/2" depth. You install but don't fully tighten the switch's bolts, so that you can rotate it back and forth until the drill bit will go in through the small hole and through the plastic piece inside, about 1/2", and then you tighten it's attaching bolts.

So, the new battery that the previous owner put in, wasn't the right battery. It fit in the tray but not down under the lip into the tray, and as is was sitting at what I thought was dangerously close to the alternator fan, at an inch or less. That, and the ridiculously huge aluminum bracket that also once held the air pump under the alternator (which I had past experience with, with my '83 3.8 Cougar, busting clean off across the cylinder head mounting bolt holes one morning, rendering the car un-drive-able and not quickly repairable), as well as incorporating the steel bracket for the adjustable idler pulley, which was protesting fairly loudly with the engine running, no doubt due to a lack of lubrication. So, again I looked around and priced the idler and alternative pulleys that could be made to work... ridiculous cost involved IMHO, and the fact remained that I wasn't comfortable with how close the battery and alternator were, even after relocating the battery tray as far forward as possible.

So first, here's a before and after:

I removed the steel tube brace to the intake and the alternator/idler bracket, the alternator, and then the aluminum combination alternator/air pump bracket from the cylinder head. So, with hack saw and file, I got rid of all of the aluminum but the cylinder head mounting face with bolt holes and the air pump hole, cut to length (accounting for the air pump hole being about an inch further rearward, that needed spacing the alternator forward for belt alignment) the necessary length threaded stud for the alternator to now pivot on, fabricated two nice thick strips of steel for mounting and adjusting brackets.

Both:

The bottom bracket for alternator pivot. I learned about the necessity of this bracket the hard way with the Cougar. A threaded stud alone is not enough to counter the forces when the belt is tightened:

The top bracket, for belt tightening adjustment:

Miles away from the battery, and nice quiet running under hood, and a nice short belt with the removal of the dealer-installed AC as well. The upper rad hose and belt had about an inch between them, but I made that short piece of steel attached to the fan shroud to hold the hose away just for safety sake. My super-dooper steel strip bent-and-hooked-into-inner-fender-hole, threaded rod, and wingnut battery hold-down can be seen here too, lol:

Looks like you have a great car to work with. I've had a convertible for 16 years and still love it. Started my Capri restoration just over a year ago and brought it home to keep the vert company 6 weeks ago. You're car is in a lot better shape than mine was when I started it. You should have a lot of fun getting her the way you want it.

Great thread. My first vert was an 84 red, V6. Just placed my 86 GT vert into storage last weekend for winter. I miss the warm top down weather.....

I like how you fixed the alt instead of buying a new/reman unit. I've never personally opened one up, next time I will.

Thanks! Cool, and my youngest brother has an '83 red that was a V6. I haven't experienced the warm top down thing yet. Next year.

I've yet to buy a new or reman alternator. Checking/replacing the brushes is too easy and too cheap. As long as it's all still electrically okay, you can't beat 8 bucks. A few tips, some I learned the hard way: 1. Put a little ATF or WD-40 or something onto the long case screw threads, and let soak for a while, so they come out easy without twisting or breaking; 2. Mark a line front to back so you reassemble it back the way it was; 3. Take some fine sandpaper/emery cloth and clean up the copper donuts that the brushes ride on; 4. Clean up inside the back case and bearing, and put a finger's worth of grease into the bearing. If mine were making noise, I'd have removed the pulley and fan and taken the armature out to get some grease into the front bearing too.

Looks like you have a great car to work with. I've had a convertible for 16 years and still love it. Started my Capri restoration just over a year ago and brought it home to keep the vert company 6 weeks ago. You're car is in a lot better shape than mine was when I started it. You should have a lot of fun getting her the way you want it.

Thanks! I can't wait for some top-down! I rode in my youngest brother's, an '83. Coincidentally, it's a twin to this '86, lol, but he tossed the V6 out of it long ago. I miss my '80 Capri I had. I learned a lot and did a lot with it, and would she ever go! Well, I hope the fun starts soon. There's been some trials, but it's all part of the game.

Something I would suggest to any Fox chassis owner, is to buy from Ford or wherever or create a restrictor for the pressure (from the intake, usually the bigger 3/4" size hose) heater core hose. This removes the factory as is situation of the greatest cooling system pressure being inside the heater core, which makes the suckers pop frequently enough to be a well known issue. I made one out of a regular 1/2" copper plumbing end cap, and drilled a 1/4" hole in it, and tapped it into the steel elbow that's at the intake manifold. My heater core is fine now, and I did what I could and hope it remains fine.

She didn't seem to like me very much for a while. If this car were a person, I'd understand why, because the majority of the things I have had to fix were due to nothing but plain old neglect mixed with a number of hodge-podge mickey mouse "repairs", etc. With a number of issues, I'd be INCHES away from the home plate of fixing something, and poof something else would go in the chain or something related or elsewhere would pop up an issue that has to be dealt with. Call me crazy, but for a while she seemed to just wanna be left alone, with a bit of the "one step forward, two steps back" business here and there... but I'm more stubborner than she is, lol. I think she's smiling more often now.

A tip for a bargain and reportedly rugged adjustable fuel pressure regulator, that apparently also bolts onto many Ford EFI fuel rails.
The regulators on these older CFI units are "anti-tamper", but the tampering for adjust-ability is real easy...
There was what looked like a button in the top of this one. You carefully drill (off the car, and so no metal gets into the throttle body) about a 1/8" hole in the "button", thread in a small screw and it comes out, because the tip of the screw goes down into the hex of an Allen bolt (which you will later use to adjust fuel pressure with your gauge connected to the fuel rail) and presses it up and out, or you grab the small screw head and pull that "button" out like you're pulling a tooth, lol